My Darling Dreadful Thing

Roos Beckman is 21 and living in the Netherlands in 1954. She has grown up under a controlling guardian who makes her help run fake séances for paying customers. Her only comfort is Ruth, a corpse-like spirit who has stayed beside her since childhood and whom nobody else can see.

At one of the backroom sittings, a wealthy young widow named Agnes Knoop takes an interest in her. The two are drawn together, and Agnes carries Roos off to Rozentuin, the crumbling family estate. Agnes shares it with the seriously ill sister of her late husband.

The house is full of odd smells and eerie statues, and a sickness hangs over it. As the attraction between the two women deepens, so does the feeling that something dreadful lies under the surface of the place.

Then a murder is committed, and suspicion falls on Roos. She is made to answer questions about her own sanity and about what exactly Ruth is to her.

The book is gothic horror told as a love story between two women, with a haunted house at its centre and dread that builds slowly. It won the 2025 British Fantasy Award for Best Horror Novel.